Entrepreneurial Ideas — Vehicles to Success

So far in this blog you have learned  how to dream again, just in case you had forgotten.  At least you have sharpened your dream skills.  You then learned how to turn those dreams into practical long term goals and how to break those down into annual goals that put the prize closer to your eyes.  You will learn in a post coming soon how to reduce them even further so that you can actually schedule your daily activity and focus your time and energy on  moving ever closer to achieving your dreams.  The challenge many of you have at this point is that you don’t have a business yet or any other vehicle that can carry you to success.  So there is no way to know what your future activity should be.  You are willing to work hard and to keep your mind focused on your goal.  But how?  You have to find a vehicle.  You need entrepreneurial ideas.  I will use the next few posts to talk about the opportunities that are available to you.  This article will give you a general outline of  many methods you can use to achieve success.  I will follow in future posts with a discussion of each one in a little more detail

I may be losing some of you now because you really don’t want to start a for-profit business.  You want to find some other vehicle.  As I pointed out in an earlier post,  Winning Attitude Essential for Success, gold is not always gold and not all vehicles have to be businesses.  But since it is necessary to have at least some money to achieve almost all goals, the emphasis here will be on business ownership.  However, if you have other vehicles in mind, a non-profit business, for example, or something else,  please keep following this blog,  anyway.  You may still find larrybuckleyblog.com useful because it really is about your life as you choose it to be and may provide some valuable tips that will help you, regardless of which path you take.

All right, I know you have heard that the middle class is shrinking and just a few people in this country control most of the wealth.  That is true.  But does that reality mean there are no opportunities unless you are already wealthy?  No, that is not what it means at all.  You may be required to think out of the box or to learn new skills but in a world of increasingly rapid change, new opportunities are opening up constantly.  Of course the possibility exists that  the best opportunities may be the ones that have not been invented yet.  The best entrepreneurial ideas may be hidden deep  in your mind waiting to be liberated.  Now I know a lot of you are saying “I thought he was going to give me the next great idea for a business.”  No, I just can’t do that.   After all, you do have to use some imagination and creativity yourself.  I will give you guidance on where to look, but the idea has to be yours.  Besides, when I do conceive the  idea for the next great American business, I will probably start that business myself.  I mean,  I can’t give away everything.  🙂

Create a Board of Trusted Advisers

No matter whether you don’t think you have any imagination for this sort of thing or you think you can come up with a million entrepreneurial ideas, there is another concept that will fall somewhere between absolutely essential to immensely useful in your endeavors.  I learned long ago to gather people around me who are smarter than I am and to leverage their ideas and talents.  You will hear me talk about this concept a lot in future posts.  But before I go any further, I want to make absolutely clear that I have great faith in your ability to produce brilliant ideas, whether you believe in yourself or not.  We all have that ability.  We just have to become observers of the world around us and find needs that have not been met.  What do people want?  That is the paramount question before you start a business and after you start a business.  It isn’t about you.  It is about them.  And you should never ever ever forget that. 
“You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.”

Help others get what they want.

 It starts with your customers.  But that concept can extend to your employees, team members, colleagues, even your vendors.  I didn’t originate that concept.  Zig Ziglar did.  Sometimes it is even all right to steal other people’s ideas.  It may even be necessary if you are going to get better at your chosen path.  You should develop the habit of associating with winners — smart people who have positive attitudes about the future and about the world around them.  Let their positive attitudes wear off on you and let your enthusiasm about your future wear off on them.  Use them as a mastermind group,  a board of trusted advisers,  whatever you want to call them.  Either find people you know will give you honest feedback or find a way get them to do so.  Do a Vulcan mind meld if you have to.  But leverage their thoughts and talents in every way you can.  (The Vulcan mind meld might require some training.)  No matter what business model you use,  trusted advisers can help you to stay grounded.  That may seem like a contradiction of what I said in How to Change Your Attitude about overcoming the conditioning you have had from negative input from other people.  You have to trust YOUR  judgement.  Do listen to others but make sure they are positive thinking people who have faith in you.  And always remember, it is YOUR passion that counts, YOUR gut feeling that an idea will work is all that counts in the end.  It is YOUR FUTURE and YOU are responsible for it!  Listen closely to your mastermind group and then use

Think of your advisers as your Board of Directors.

YOUR best judgement.  Think of your trusted advisers as your Board of Directors.  The Board sets the direction but YOU run the company.  Hopefully, they will stand behind you no matter what decision you make and will continue to give you feedback on your future decisions.

Entrepreneurial Opportunities

You can use other people’s entrepreneurial ideas to start a new enterprise or you might even buy into theirs.   McDonald’s made franchising popular and they were so successful with it that today’s business owners very frequently look to franchising as a way to get their idea or concept out into the marketplace.  All you have to do is google to find more franchises available for purchase than you would have believed possible.

If you have the capital or can get it, you may find buying an existing business to be a good option.  There are brokers who  sell businesses just like real estate agents sell property.

You can also start a business from scratch using your own entrepreneurial idea or concept.  However, if you have never run a business before,  your mastermind group becomes crucial to your success.  You might even want to consider taking on talented partners to help you make your business grow.

You can open a storefront business or you can manufacture a product and

What business should you start?

market it through retail businesses owned by other people.  You can become a distributor for other people’s products as well.  You could start an online business.  Or you can do a combination.  I personally feel that although people will be able to make money in a mom and pop storefront establishment far into the future, any storefront business owner who wants a high level of success will need an internet presence.  By that I don’t just mean for you to get someone to build a website for you and throw it out there to see what happens.  I mean learn how to rank on google, learn how to leverage social media, learn how to build a brand online that will enhance your offline business.  Again, you may have to learn some new skills. But once you have learned those skills, you will be able to enhance your offline business in a huge way or be able to make money in several  existing categories of internet business, even if you don’t create the next big internet idea yourself.  I will talk about those categories in a later post.

Another direction in starting a home business could be a network marketing business.  There are a lot of scams out there but also a lot of great companies.  Network marketing is a legitimate and rapidly growing marketing concept that allows a person with little investment capital to grow a business, online or offline, into a substantial, sometimes incredible, income, working from home without the costs of a business storefront or office and without the costs associated with having employees.  I personally have several businesses under my company’s umbrella and a couple of them are network marketing businesses.  And I will talk extensively about network marketing in future posts.

The economy is improving but it still has a long way to go.  But people are buying more in anticipation of better days to come.   That means opportunity to the aspiring entrepreneur in any type of business.  And the near depression we experienced convinced a lot of people that there is no job security.  People are looking for opportunities and that gives the network marketer the edge.  Whatever type business you decide to start, the timing is right and the opportunities are real.  Laura Petrecca wrote an article in USA Today in 2009 that is just as valid today, maybe more so.  People are buying more now than they were then. 

Of Course, There Are Obstacles

Just as there were obstacles with your  goals, you will find obstacles attached to many of your potential success vehicles. Retail businesses take financing.  Sometimes it is difficult or impossible to find the money, particularly if you

There may be major obstacles . Don’t give up. Adjust your goals.

have never owned a business before. And being under financed can be a road to failure.  To succeed in an internet business takes expertise.  And I don’t just mean computer skills.  You may be a novice or you may be absolutely amazing on the computer.  No matter which is true, you may know little if anything about marketing  and even if you do, you probably don’t know anything about how to market on the internet.  I know a few of you do have those skills but most don’t.  So it will take a lot of time to build your expertise.  Your obstacles may be formidable.  But they are not impossible unless you decide they are.   The bigger the obstacle, the bigger the challenge.  But all they really mean is that it may take more imagination and more time to reach you goals than you at first thought.  That’s why we do goal adjustments.  You may have to use some interim steps to prepare to overcome the obstacles — to get the training or the experience or the backing that you need.  Remember, all this started with a dream.  The dream produces the passion.  The goals that come out of that dream must be so crystal clear in your mind that you will find a way to achieve them, no matter what it takes.

In the next few posts, I will discuss some of the above business models in greater detail.  But I sincerely hope the general concepts I have outlined here have already brought your vision of your future into better focus.

I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Let me know about your past successes or failures and whether what you have gotten from this blog so far has changed your thinking in any way or set you on a new path.  If you enjoyed “Entrepreneurial Ideas — Vehicles to Success”, I would like to know.  Please  leave a comment.  I would like to hear from you.  And if you leave your name and email address at the top right corner of this page, I will also send you a notification anytime I update the blog.